Best 292 quotes in «tennis quotes» category

Why did I lose? No reason, though you might like to know that I got tired, my ears started popping, the rubber came off my shoes, I got cramp, and I lost one of my contact lenses. Other than that I was in great shape.

Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.

Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us? It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault.

Winning is a way of expressing yourself.

Working with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.

Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.

Yeah, I think there are many other important things in life, not just tennis.

You are always talking about yourself and tennis and how you are feeling. I try to avoid it when I don't have to.

Wimbledon is getting a bit too like Royal Ascot. It's not what happens or who wins so much, as what clothes do I have on.

Wimbledon is the world's most boring tournament. There's hardly anything to do apart from tennis. You constantly find yourself yawning - there's no entertainment here.

You can't be considered a great player unless you win Wimbledon. That's the way it is.

You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had. I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson. "Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.

You'd have to think that if he'd been around today, Rod Laver would have been Rod Laver.

Wimbledon attracted Bill Clinton to the gallery at Centre Court Tuesday at the All England Club. NBC cameras showed his head turning back and forth with each volley. Even at a tennis match, it looks like he's denying everything.

You don't think about anything because you just try to playevery game, every point. If you get some chance, you try to take this chance.

You know why I want to win? Because of 15,000 reasons inside of the tennis court.

You'll hear a lot of applause in your life, but none will mean more to you than that applause from your peers. I hope each of you hears that at the end.

You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

You have to believe on the court. In the end, it's mental. In these moments against a great champion like Rafa, you have to believe. It's all about stepping in and taking your chances. I always believed, but it's a process of learning.

Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, watching the young Swiss at play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.

You know growing up in Sweden meant we had a lot of rain when we played tennis. We were taught on clay courts but because of the weather, we had to go indoors a lot.

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?

But every step of Williams’s career has been shadowed with the sort of resentment that emerges whenever someone unsettles the status quo in an effective and unapologetic way. Put differently, when she stirred the pot, a whole lot of bullshit rose to the surface – and her refusal to try to perfume its smell has made her unruliness all the more potent.

By batting a ball back and forth over a net one forgets all one's worries, one even forgets about death.

During a match, you are in a permanent battle to fight back your everyday vulnerabilities, bottle up your human feelings. It’s a kind of self-hypnosis, a game you play, with deadly seriousness, to disguise your own weaknesses from yourself, as well as from your rival.

Ciò che rende speciale qualcosa non è quel che si vince, ma quel che senti di poter perdere.

Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport. His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.

Fifteen love,' Chris said in a strong, clear voice as he set up for his next serve, and Elizabeth sensed that in addition to announcing the score, he was sending her a special message. A message about love...

His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human. To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.

Ho attraversato una grande estate, poi ho perso quella partita. Mi ha spezzato il cuore. Non mi sono mai sentito così solo sul campo o più deluso dal gioco.

I didn't cry when they buried my father - I wouldn't let myself. I didn't cry when they buried my sister. On Thursday night, with my family asleep upstairs, my eyes filled as Agassi and Marcos Baghdatis played out the fifth set of their moving second-round match.

Ho la sensazione di essere stato messo a parte di un piccolo, ignobile segreto – vincere non cambia niente. Adesso che ho vinto uno slam, so qualcosa che a pochissimi al mondo è concesso sapere. Una vittoria non è così piacevole quant’è dolorosa una sconfitta. E ciò che provi dopo aver vinto non dura altrettanto a lungo. Nemmeno lontanamente.

Hai visto che bella libertà?” Lui ha capito. Io poi mi sono messo a pensare a questa faccenda delle righe del campo da tennis, che danno claustrofobia. Il giocatore costretto a mettere la pallina sempre dentro la riga, ma non solo dentro la riga, ma più vicino possibile alla riga, ma più vicino vai alla riga più corri il rischio di mettere la pallina fuori dalla riga, cosa che è veramente angosciante e ossessiva e claustrofobica. E le righe sono sempre quelle e io lo so che i giocatori la notte vanno a dormire, chiudono gli occhi e vedono le righe, lo so che vedono righe ovunque e stanno attentissimi quando camminano a non calpestare le righe tra i blocchi di pietra dei marciapiedi, o del parquet, o delle mattonelle, che è difficilissimo. E non possono mai stare fermi a guardarle quelle righe: vanno su, vanno giù, ma non si fermano in mezzo al campo a guardare intorno perché c’è l’arbitro che gli dice “tempo!”, cosa che è ossessiva, claustrofobica e un pochino malvagia, secondo me. Tutto questo a mio figlio grande non l’avevo detto, gli avevo solo detto quella cosa sulla libertà. Il resto avrebbe dovuto capirlo da solo: che differenza c’è tra noi e i tennisti? Poca roba. Noi abbiamo le righe che ci siamo disegnati da soli e fatichiamo a non tirare fuori troppe palline. Se vuoi uscire dalle maledettissime righe – e dio solo sa se ci ho provato – arriva l’arbitro e fischia il fallo e ti porta dritto in galera. Poi ci sono quelli che dicono che quando ci si accorge che le righe sono troppo strette bisogna mettersi d’accordo tutti per spostarle. Oppure ci sono quelli che dicono che è inutile spostarle: è il concetto stesso di riga a essere sbagliato. E allora via, togliamo le righe. Ma io mi chiedo – e non è che io sia stato tanto a rispettarle quelle righe lì – una volta tolte, come si fa a giocare? Insomma io a mio figlio grande gliele direi queste cose, visto che è chiaro che passa giornate intere a discutere di quelle maledette righe coi suoi compagni dell’università: spostarle, cancellarle o che ne so io.

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys” — and here I’m really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce’s feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: “If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I’m in heaven.

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.

It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely giftes as athletes, are the only ones truly able to see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied.

Humility is the recognition of your limitations, and it is from this understanding, and this understanding alone, that the drive comes to work hard at overcoming them.

[Lizzie Bennington to a reporter who has asked for her opinion about Jack Archer's celebrated thighs.] “When you come back from a set down and bring the match to a final set tiebreak and are a point away from winning the match, only to have what looks like an extremely fit player call a time out because of a cramp and then watch that player sit back and casually converse and laugh while you do your best to keep your mental focus and your body moving so you don’t grow cold and cramp yourself, I hardly think you’d concern yourself with his burgeoning manhood, let alone his thighs!

I've internalized my father- his impatience, his perfectionism, his rage. I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis, let alone make it my life. My father decided long before I was born that I would be a professional tennis player.

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, from which I learnt that a knowledge of mathematics and physics was essential to the pursuit of astronomy. This increased my fondness for those subjects.

She felt about a love set as a painter does about his masterpiece; each ace serve was a form of brushwork to her, and her fantastically accurate shot-placing was certainly a study in composition.

Put differently, the rhetoric of Williams’ different body isn’t just sexist – it’s profoundly racist.

Quel che rende speciale qualcosa non è quel che si vince, ma quel che senti di poter perdere.

Were you serious when you said I might win someday at Wimbledon?" Claire answered, "There's so much that's pure luck, good or bad. The weather can be terrible. We always say we should re-schedule Wimbledon and hold it in the summer!" I frowned. "Wimbledon is in the summer." Claire sighed. "It's a joke, Fiona." "Oh.

Some books have too much tennis. Some books have too much baseball. Some books have too much boxing. Some books have too much horse.

The Williams sisters had something else: each other, and their absolute dominance.